Postcode/radius calculator for Excel/Access

[simon]

Is there such a plug in (ideally for Access) that can handle the
following scenario?

1) I have a list of suppliers, goods they sell and addresses/postcodes
2) Customer comes along, says they need item X but must be from a
supplier within 7 miles of their location
3) I pump in their postcode and I get the result being the location of
all relevant suppliers within that radius

I have heard of someone who has something that can find the location
of suppliers within a radius set up in an Excel spreadsheet, but they
WON'T share it! So throwing myself on you guys for assistance.

Trawled the net to no real avail. So relying on the experience of
others.

Thanks

Si

 

[Keith R]

I don't know if it is still available, or sufficient for your needs- but
IIRC, the postal service or some government agency had a list of all
zipcodes and their relative distances. That doesn't help if you want the
precise level of "7 miles" because you would also need to know the width of
each zip code area, but it may be a starting point. I haven't looked for it
for several years, but google is your friend.

You could then calculate the distance to each supplier, and sort to find the
shortest one(s).

HTH,
Keith

 

[Dave Miller]

I use yahoo local search api for distance lookups, relative to zip
codes. Send a search URL to the system and it returns the results in
xml format.

Regards,

David Miller